Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula won the China Open on Friday and advanced to the third round in Beijing.

Bpth defeated opponents from France. Fourth-seeded Gauff beat Clara Burel 7-5, 6-3, while second-seeded Pegula recovered from a second-set loss to beat Diane Parry 6-1, 7-6 (4). defeated.

For Pegula it was the first game since the US Open final, which she lost to Aryna Sabalenka from Belarus. She withdrew from the Korea Open last week with a rib injury, but won 16 of her last 18 matches, losing only to Sabalenka both times.

Pegula scored 33 winners compared to 14 for Parry, who committed 24 unforced errors. In her comeback, the American won 77 percent of the points on her first serve in the second set.

“She’s super tricky,” Pegula said of Parry in her on-court interview. “I thought she served really well at the start of the second set. She held her serve much better and I had a bad serve game. But honestly I thought I still played really well. I think in the first set.” I played perfectly. I knew that maybe that would change when she found her rhythm a little bit and the way she plays. You really need a lot of patience. “

Next up for Pegula will be No. 32 seed Veronika Kudermetova of Russia, who beat Xinyu Wang of China 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 in two hours and 42 minutes.

Gauff, with a newly formed coaching staff at her side, needed 100 minutes to fend off Burel’s challenge. The 20-year-old won her 46th WTA 1000 hard court tournament, joining Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark as the most players to win before the age of 21.

In the next round, Gauff will face No. 26 seed Brit Katie Boulter, who beat American Taylor Townsend 6-4, 6-4.

Japan’s Naomi Osaka, a former world No. 1, recovered from a set down to beat No. 21 seed Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan 3-6, 6-4, 6-2. The 2019 Beijing champion Osaka had lost 22 consecutive games in which she lost the first set.

“I heard that statistic from my agent and I really wanted to break it,” Osaka said. “…I also wanted to show myself that I could win a match and fight without playing as perfectly as I wanted.

In the third round, Osaka awaits the American Katie Volynets.

Other winners on Friday included Russia’s Diana Shnaider and Anna Kalinskaya, Spain’s Paula Badosa, Slovakia’s Rebecca Sramkova and Poland’s Magdalena Frech.

–Field level media